Police Searching Home Related To Cold Case

April 29, 2010|By The Hartford Courant

State police are searching a home today in Bridgewater that may have connections to a cold case in Newtown, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a state police spokesman.

On April 14, police found the skeletal remains of Elizabeth Gough Heath, who was last seen more than 26 years ago, in a chamber beneath the sub-flooring in a Newtown barn. She was the victim of a homicide. The medical examiner's office did not release the cause of Heath's death at the request of prosecutors, who did not want to tip off people state and local police are questioning about Heath's killing.

Friends reported last seeking Heath April 1, 1984. Her husband, John S. Heath, told police he last saw her April 4, 1984, days after he filed for divorce. He reported her missing two days later.

Her remains were recovered from a barn on property where she and her husband lived at the time, 89 Poverty Hollow Road. John Heath lost that property to foreclosure in 2005 and moved to 5 Keeler Road in Bridgewater. The medical examiner used dental records to positively ID the skeleton as Heath.

A friend of Elizabeth Heath said earlier this month that her disappearance never made any sense. She was a devoted mother to her 4-year-old daughter, Meghann. She also was an organic gardener and made her own clothes. "She just wouldn't up and leave," said Barbara DeLong of Bethel.

John Heath's divorce from his wife continued after her disappearance and was completed that same year. In 1985 he married Raquel Figueroa Heath, and the couple runs a painting company.

John Heath did not respond to telephone messages left at his home Thursday and Friday. He has reportedly told relatives he knows nothing about his former wife's disappearance and has talked to a lawyer.

After John Heath lost the Poverty Hollow Road property, a physician from Redding, Kenneth Wright, bought the 3-acre parcel with a house and former dairy barn that had been converted into apartments from the bank.

On April 14, Wright and his son Jordan Wright were tearing up the flooring in a ground-floor apartment when they found a hatchway into the concrete.

"I saw some plastic bags, old bedding and fabric. I dug a little deeper and found a femur," Jordan Wright, a 33-year-old contractor, said after meeting with Newtown and state police detectives investigating the homicide. "I thought, 'There's probably a body in there,' and we called 911." Heath's complete skeleton was in the chamber.

The Wrights have a tenant in the upper apartment but as far as Jordan Wright knows, no one had lived in the barn for 20 years prior to that.